I don’t know the Nia Blue Belt Principles by heart yet. I think I should, but I don’t. I will work on that. I was doing my 30 minutes for the December 30 Minute Movement Challenge, while I was doing it I was wondering if I could get ready to go teach the Nia class tonight, make a salad, straighten up the room, and write a blog all in the 30 minutes I had left before I had to leave. While I realized that was not possible I thought I could at least come up with a topic for my post. I thought about posting the fourth principle of the Nia Blue Belt, but I couldn’t remember what it is. At the end of my 30 minutes for the December 30 Minute Movement Challenge I did the Nia 5 Stages. As I was doing the Nia 5 Stages I thought I could post about them, then I thought not because I would want to spend more time writing about that. I decided to see what the Principle #4 is. When I saw it, I had to laugh out loud. Nia Blue Belt Principle #4 is Developmental Anatomy. The tagline is Reaching Your Ideal. I find this too funny. The reason it is funny is that the Developmental Anatomy used as a tool to assist in reaching your ideal is the Nia 5 Stages.
The Nia 5 Stages are the stages we go through in development. The stages are: Embryonic, Creeping, Crawling, Standing, and Walking. In the womb we are embryonic, we move with comfort through fluid, we are safe, comfortable, and warm. Once born most infants creep. Creeping is not crawling, but it is getting us around, but not very efficiently. At one point there is crawling. We are much more mobile and active. We see a lot more and often we go after it in this stage. Then there is that stage where we “stand”. The standing usually starts out with the help of something or someone. While in life this stage for a child involves a lot of sitting . . . get wobbly and fall on their butt, it does not in the Nia 5 Stages. The standing in the Nia 5 Stages is more of a low to the ground squat. Then there is the stage of walking. The Nia 5 Stages is actually a movement practice. It is based on science. It is a tool to help the body move more efficient. As I previously stated, I would love to do a more in-depth post or even posts on it, I will do that at a later time.
What Nia did for the Nia Blue Belt Principle #4 was allow us to use this movement, the practice of the Nia 5 Stages as a tool to reach our ideals. It is very interesting how Nia uses the body for this. If you have a goal in mind, the idea is to think about it and go to the body to find out where you are in reaching it. Again, to me, another brilliant connection made by Nia. It really makes sense to find out where you are in the stage of reaching your goal so you can work on what you need to work on to complete it. Are you in the embryonic stage of the goal? Maybe just thinking about it? Are you are far as the standing stage? Doing the movement to find out really helps the entire process. There is no triad for this principle as it uses the Nia 5 Stages pictographs. If you are at the point of taking the Nia Blue Belt you would be familiar with the 5 stages and the pictures so they work as the symbols for Nia Blue Belt Principle #4.
So, it was funny to me that I was thinking about posting about principle #4, but couldn’t remember what is was. Then I thought I would post about the Nia 5 Stages. And it turns out they are very much connected.
Do you see how there could be stages of a goal?
I have posted these feet facts before, but since I couldn’t easily find them because they are part of a larger post. I thought I would list them for quick reference:
Terre Pruitt's Blog 